


Ye Merrie Olde Adventures of Duke Stephen, Vol. 1 - In Which There is a Meeting of Great Portent

by PlotDotOh (TheCheerfulPornographer)



Series: Ye Merrie Olde Adventures of Duke Stephen (and His Knights) [1]
Category: Fake News FPF, Fake News RPF, Pundit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Crack, Economics, Friendship/Love, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/PlotDotOh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started when the new young Duke, Lord Stephen de Colbert, finally got around to arresting that loudmouthed troubadour — the one who wouldn't stop badmouthing him all over the Duchy of Newest York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ye Merrie Olde Adventures of Duke Stephen, Vol. 1 - In Which There is a Meeting of Great Portent

**Author's Note:**

> As told to me by Min the Beggar, who was there and seen it all with his one good eye. He swears!

It all started when the new young Duke, Lord Stephen de Colbert, finally got around to arresting that loudmouthed troubadour — the one who wouldn't stop badmouthing him all over the Duchy of Newest York.

Now, you have to understand that Duke Stephen was still pretty new in his role, at the time. He wasn't actually the son of the beloved Old Duke, who had no heir when he passed away, lost to a tragic accident involving auto-erotic asphyxiation. (In fact, those two life choices might have been somewhat related.) 

In fact, Duke Stephen wasn't from the Duchy of Newest York at all; he hailed from the Duchy of Colbert, in the strange and faraway land of Southern Karolina, where people marry their own sisters and some of them (so it's said) have two or even three working noses, on one face. 

Young Stephen made the perilous journey to Newest York at the behest of the Black King, who decided to grant him dominion over the Duchy of Newest York for reasons that no one, to this day, completely understands. (The Black King could be a closed-mouthed and subtle man when he choose to, or so it's said.)

We were all quite relieved to see that Duke Stephen only had one nose on his face, and brought along no sister.

Anyway, so the Duke's position was at the time rather new and fragile, being alone in a strange land as he was. So when the minstrel Jon — called by his friends Jon Steward, for reasons unknown to me — started speaking out against the new Duke's edicts and raising a hue and cry within the towns and villages of the realm, Duke Stephen decided that he simply couldn't have it. 

He sent for his guard captain, a fierce and seasoned warrior named Rachel of the Meadow, whom (like most of his court officials) he had inherited from his predecessor. 

\-----

"Your Grace," Sir Rachel said, bowing her head to the bare minimum angle that could pass for polite. 

Duke Stephen got the sense that his Guard Captain didn't like him very much, and had already been tempted several times to send her packing back to her meadow. Wherever _that_ was. 

He refrained, though, because a) he didn't know where he could find another guard captain as shrewd and capable as she was, and b) he was afraid that she would hurt him.

"Sir Rachel," Duke Stephen said. "Do you know the troubadour who is called, for some reason, Jon the Steward? Short, grey-haired guy, looks like he might be part elf?" 

Sir Rachel nodded. 

"Cool," the Duke said. "I want him arrested and brought here to me, please."

"Really? Why?" Sir Rachel said. "What law has he broken?"

Duke Stephen frowned at the question. In his opinion, Guard Captains weren't there to talk back or ask questions; they were there to act as bigger, better toy soldier dolls. Right? 

Or rather, toy soldier _collectible figurines_ , which are quite manly and not at all like dolls, which are for girls.

"He broke the First Law," said Duke Stephen. "The one that goes, 'don't talk shit about the guy who owns the dungeon.'" 

Then, just in case Sir Rachel didn't get his subtle humor, he said, "That's me."

Sir Rachel rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure that's not a thing," she said.

"It is now," said the Duke. "By my ducal decree, etcetera etcetera. Now stop lollygagging, and go arrest this dude."

"Alright, fine," Sir Rachel said, and she left.

\-----

Duke Stephen started to feel kind of homesick while Sir Rachel was gone, so he decided to find someone to distract him until she returned. He decided to call in his court astrologer, Neil of Tyson — though for some reason everyone called him Grass Neil. (And I can assure you that, no matter what you may have heard, Duke Stephen had absolutely _no_ idea what that reason might be.)

"Grass Neil," the Duke said. "I'm going to be fitted for a new suit of royal clothing tomorrow. Can you read the stars and tell me what the omens say about my new clothes? Like, for example, will they fit properly? Will I like the color? Will they last a long time, or are they, for example, destined to be torn off of me in a frenzy by a group of beautiful maidens who had previously been placed under an extremely potent love spell?"

The Court Astrologer looked at him, and slowly shook his head. He seemed to be rather at a loss for words, but Duke Stephen was used to that. Sometimes it took folks awhile to get adjusted to his brilliance. 

"Um, look, dude," Grass Neil said, splaying both of his hands wide. "I don't know what exactly you think it is that I do here, but reading omens for a... a _suit of clothing_ , wow. Really?" He cocks his head to the side, disbelieving. "Anyways, that isn't exactly a part of my job description."

"You're the Court Astrologer, right?" said Duke Stephen. Was all the world united to conspire against him?

"Court Astronomer," Grass Neil corrected him. "Astr _ono_ mer. There's a big difference."

"Okay, whatever," Duke Stephen said. "Fine. If you won't tell me the future of my new suit of clothing, then what else _can_ you tell me?"

"Well, I can tell you that Pluto isn't a planet," Grass Neil said. After he said it, he kind of braced himself, like he was prepping for a fight.

"Pluto? Of course He isn't," Duke Stephen said. "He's the God of the Underworld in classic Roman myth, praise be unto Him. Please, if I know anything, it's my classic Roman myth. I mean really, who the hell thinks that Pluto is a planet? That doesn't even make sense."

Grass Neil was saved from having to reply when Sir Rachel clattered back in, hauling along a sour-faced and protesting Jon Steward. "Here you go, Your Grace," she said, pushing the man forward. "As requested."

The prisoner looked up at the Duke, who was readying himself to enjoy a good grovel, and he noticed Grass Neil standing next to his captor. A smile flickered over his face. "Neil of Tyson!" he exclaimed. "What's up, my brother! Don't tell me that you're working for this asshole, now."

"Good to see you too, Jon," the Court Astrologer replied. He stepped over to Jon, who raised his rope-tied hands and bumped their fists together, in what the Duke guessed must be some primitive form of greeting. "I'm afraid that I am. There's still nowhere else that beats the Royal Observatory's equipment; at least, not anywhere outside of the Black Tower." 

"Wait, you two know one another?" Duke Stephen asked.

"Oh, please," Grass Neil said, waving his hands again. "Everybody knows Jon."

"Yeah, he's the most respected and popular news minstrel in all of Amurrica!" Sir Rachel chimed in. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of him, even in far Southern Karolina."

Jon shifted his weight and looked kind of awkward. "Oh, stop," he said. "I'm just an entertainer, I don't..."

"Yes you are, shut up!" Grass Neil and Sir Rachel chorused, in perfect unison. Duke Stephen got the sense that this was an exchange they'd had many times before. 

Worse, it was an exchange that didn't include him, and that just wouldn't fly.

"Alright," he said, crossing his arms and trying to look tough. (He wished that he had Sweetness, his beloved sword, with him. Unfortunately, she was on his other belt.) "Jon the Minstrel, called Jon Steward. Care to tell me why you've been going around calling my plan to move Newest York onto the Leprechaun gold standard, and I quote," he pulled a little slip of paper out of his pocket, " 'the most wrong-headed, ass-backward, willfully obtuse scheme that was ever cooked up by a hollow-headed, thick-necked noble sitting on his golden throne and cackling to himself while servants fan him and wipe away the dribbles of goose fat from his mouth.' " Duke Stephen had a pretty impressive lung capacity, and he still had to take a deep breath when he was finished reading.

Sir Rachel looked impressed; she patted her prisoner on the back approvingly.

"Because it is," Jon Steward said. He opened his mouth, obviously gearing up to argue, but Duke Stephen cut him off.

"Okay, first of all," he said, "I'll have you know that my neck is very slender. Slender, yet masculine. See?" He tilted his head, and they all looked speculatively at his neck. 

Grass Neil nodded admiringly. "It is quite slender," he conceded.

"Secondly," the Duke continued, "a gold throne, really? What do you take me for? I'll have you know that my throne is made of nothing less than the finest elf-woven faerie hair, inset with rubies and crystallized unicorn tears. Gold thrones are for _barons_." He shudders in disgust.

"Thirdly, I have beautiful table manners, and I _never_ dribble."

"And finally, why is it such a stupid scheme? All of Amurrica was on the Leprechaun gold standard for like 100 years!"

"Yeah, 100 _shitty_ years," Jon said. "There's a reason that we changed in the first place, you know. Look, Your Grace" — the minstrel's face got all intent and earnest, in a way that the Duke found oddly compelling, despite his best intentions — "Every single one of your subjects thinks that your idea is stupid. It's not just me, I swear."

 _Yeah, you're just the one who has to shout it from the rooftops,_ the Duke thought.

"The issue is that there's not nearly enough Leprechaun gold in the whole Duchy to back our whole economy and keep it strong and growing. And it's not like we can just, I dunno, breed more Leprechauns or something."

"We can't?" Duke Stephen asked.

"No," Jon Steward said. "We can't. They're a protected species, and you don't want the Magical Fauna Protection Agency coming down on your ass. I'm serious, man. You don't have to believe me; you can ask your Court Wizard."

"Oh, I have a Court Wizard, too?" Duke Stephen said. "Sweet!"

"Yeah, his office is right next to mine," Grass Neil said. "We sometimes share a bowl... um, of soup. You know, for dinner." Sir Rachel snorted. Duke Stephen didn't see what was so funny. (Soup, after all, was no laughing matter; rather, it was an important part of a well-balanced Royal diet.) "Anyways, I'll run and get him if you want." Duke Stephen nodded, and Grass Neil wandered off to retrieve the Wizard.

\-----

"Hello," the Court Wizard said politely as he came into the room. He was a birdlike man with spectacles perched atop a pointy nose, dressed in a silver robe that was embroidered with strange symbols. A lot of them looked like numbers and Greek letters, formed into strange curves and arcane equations. 

"People call me Nate the Silver," the Court Wizard introduced himself. He held out his hand to the Duke. 

Stephen didn't usually like to shake hands with magic people, because he was afraid that they would suck out little pieces of his soul through his fingernails. But the poor man started looking a little nervous, so Stephen took his hand and shook it anyway. "The Silver?" he said. "As in, the Silver _Fox_?"

The wizard looked baffled, but Sir Rachel snorted in amusement. "Nope," she said. "Not even close. The Silver Fox is a mysterious and elusive mercenary who fights for truth and justice, and looks damn good doing it. He's also, you know, silver." She gestures at her hair. "This guy, on the other hand, is a brunet and a wizard." 

"Actually, I'm a psephologist," Nate the Silver said.

"What does that mean?" It was Jon, of course, who asked it, though they all were wondering. 

Nate the Silver gave him a strange look and said, "It's someone who studies psephology, of course."

"Alright, Wizard," Duke Stephen said. "Enough with the fancy magic words; I didn't bring you here to show off. I summoned you here because we've having an economic debate, and I was hoping you could help." The wizard's eyes lit up with excitement, only to grow dim again as the Duke continued speaking.

"Can you summon a Leprechaun here and make him appear before us? We want to ask him about his gold, and also about whether he might consider breeding."

Nate the Silver looked pained, although that might just have been his face. He said, "I'm really, _really_ not actually a wizard. I keep telling people this, but no one will believe me."

"Of course you are," Duke Stephen said, "Don't be silly. No one who isn't a wizard would be caught dead wearing a robe like that."

"You gave it to me," Nate the Silver muttered.

"...And you use strange words that are all tricky and multisyllabic, like a wizard," the Duke continued.

"By Pluto's icy arsehole, your very surname gives you away! Nate 'Silver'." He makes the quote marks with his fingers. "Nobody's not a wizard who's ever had a metallic name like that!" 

There was a pause while everyone else parsed his convoluted grammar, and then his even more convoluted logic. 

"He's got you there," Jon Steward said. "It definitely is a wizard-sounding name."

Nate the Silver sighed, and looked even more pained. He said, "Okay, fine. Whatever, I'm a wizard."

"I still can't summon a Leprechaun, though."

 _I'm surrounded by incompetents,_ Duke Stephen thought, not for the first time.

"What I can do, however," Nate the Silver continued, "is develop an economic projection model based on past trends in Leprechaun gold distribution... hmm. Maybe factor in the trade balance with other duchys... yes! And the effect of this year's rainfall on crop yields, naturally, and let's not forget to account for spoilage... and then there's the health of the ducal herds of cows and sheep to consider..." 

With a snap of his fingers, the Wizard pulled a super-fancy, complex three-dimensional abacus out of the air. Already fiddling with it, he plopped down on the floor, right there in the reception room, and started pushing different sizes and colors of beads along their wires. He began muttering, what sounded like strange and complex incantations. Duke Stephen heard something about best-fit curves and Bayesian simulations, before he stopped listening and wrote it off as Wizard Stuff.

"Don't mind him," Grass Neil said. "He falls into these fits sometimes. He'll be fine, as long as you don't interrupt him while he's still in it."

"Wizards," Duke Stephen said, "Can't live with them, and they'll explode your brain if you try to kick them out. Am I right?" 

Jon Steward laughed, and then afterward looked surprised at himself, like he couldn't quite understand why he had done it.

They all stared at the muttering Silver for another minute, and then Duke Stephen said, "Well, I suppose we should leave him to it. You're all dismissed, I guess."

"What about the prisoner?" Sir Rachel asked. "Should I take him to the dungeon?" As she said it, a resigned look passed over Jon Steward's face.  

Resigned... and also something else. Kind of hungry? Like he maybe hadn't quite had a good dinner in awhile. 

Like maybe the prospect of even prison porridge was starting to seem appealing.

Duke Stephen found himself wondering exactly how well the job of freelance news minstrel paid, these days. And then, suddenly, a brilliant idea hit him! It was like a bolt out of the blue — but one that gave him the idea to hire Jon, instead of electrifying his brain and killing him instantly, like such a bolt normally would.

"No, I have a different idea," he said. "Actually, it's sort of a proposal."

"You can't buy me off," Jon said immediately. "Sorry. Richer dudes than you have tried."

"And you told them all where they could shove it, right?" Duke Stephen said. Jon cautiously nodded.

"Of course you did. Of _course_ you did, because you could never live with that, could you? If you had to actually keep silent. If you couldn't be the one to say what everyone else is thinking, and to say it funnier and sharper. More concise. If you weren't a troubadour, if no one listened to you ever, you'd go out into the forest and deliver monologues to the trees."

"Wouldn't you? Be honest, now."

Jon blinked, and looked surprised. "I may have convinced a stump or two of the importance of veterans' benefits," he allowed.

"I can tell," Duke Stephen said, "that you're a man who just won't shut up. And I like that!" His voice softened, just a little. "Maybe it reminds me of myself." 

The admission lingers in the air between them, making things super awkward for a minute. 

"And there's nothing I like better than things that remind me of myself!" Duke Stephen concludes. "Ipso facto, I would never in any way try to buy your silence. Actually, what I'd like to do is buy your speech."

Jon Steward looks confused.

"Stay here, with me," Duke Stephen said, spreading his hands to indicate the palace all around them. "Stay here and join my Court. And instead of telling everyone _else_ about it whenever I'm wrong, you can skip the middleman, and just tell _me_."

"Sometimes, I might even listen."

Jon's eyes lit up. "Like an advisor?" he asked.

"Exactly. Like a _chief_ advisor," Duke Stephen said.

"Ooh. Can I be your Grand Vizier? I've always thought that was a super badass title," Jon Steward said.

"Really, you should be my Steward," Duke Stephen said, "because then at least one of you people's names would make sense. But, sure! Why not? I've already got an astrologer who refuses to read omens, a guard captain who openly mocks me, and an obvious wizard who keeps insisting that he isn't. Why not have a minstrel named Steward as my Grand Vizier, too? It makes as much as sense as anything here in Newest York does."

"Okay," Jon said. "Give me the title, and I'll do it. I'll stick around here, and tell you when you're wrong."

"Okay," Duke Stephen said. "Great!" He turned to Sir Rachel, ignoring her smirk, and motioned her to untie Jon's hands. When the minstrel was loosed, the Duke stepped forward and clasped his hands in his own. "It's official, then. Welcome to my Court." And the two men looked at one another, and they smiled. 

For just a second or two, they shared a _genuine_ smile, one that cut through title and rank and class, and all of that other bullshit.

It was a smile that said: "It's like I already know you." And Duke Stephen realized that he was having a feeling — a feeling that said this was the start of something big. Something that would end up being really, really good.

This made the Duke quite happy indeed. Lord Stephen de Colbert _always_ trusted his gut feelings.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but he was rudely interrupted by an outburst from Nate the Silver. "83.267!" the Court Wizard exclaimed.

Silver looked up from his abacus, to face their confused stares. "That's the mean amount that economic output would fall in Newest York," he explained, "if we moved back onto the Leprechaun gold standard."

"That _is_ a rather mean amount," Duke Stephen agreed.

The wizard toyed with his abacus, idly flicking a bead back and forth along its wire and causing a very confused pig, somewhere in the duchy, to disappear and reappear over and over again. (Though he didn't really mean it.)

"I can give you a breakdown of likely impacts by industry and village, if you want," he offered.

"That's okay, Silver," Duke Stephen said. "No need to tax your powers today." He smiled at Jon again. "I trust my Grand Vizier's word about this matter."

Jon Steward looked touched.

"But I have a different idea, now," Duke Stephen said to his Grand Vizier. "What do you think about faerie platinum..."

THE END (FOR NOW)

**Author's Note:**

> Written in celebration of winning NaNoWriMo!
> 
> I feel like I should apologize for making Neil deGrasse Tyson into a stoner. He probably isn't, but the name demands it.
> 
> Also, I know nothing about the gold standard and why it may or may not be a good idea, so please don't send Ron Paul to haunt my dreams. Thanks!


End file.
